Conclusion

Final Words 

In general speaking, and as far as I am concerned, AMD couldn't launch 65W processors anytime sooner. See the heat of the flagship model X SKU's has been haunting the sales, well that and the total cost of ownership, including DDR5 and a new motherboard. With the 65W parts, that picture now changes. The Ryzen 5 7600 features six cores and can be purchased for $229, offering roughly 10% less performance than its X counterpart, and that's a good proposition. Its lower operating temperatures are a big plus, and while 8 cores are ideal for gaming, a 6-core processor will do the job just fine. It has PCI Express Gen 5, Dual Channel DDR5, and a CPU that can reach 5.1 GHz with ease, therefore, it has the potential to become AMD's sweet spot processor if you can find cheap motherboards to go along with it. 

Price and value

The price premium for Series 7000 processors remains problematic when you look at the total cost of ownership; it differentiates and, I suppose, is not cannibalising the current Ryzen 5000 series. We expect the 7600 to retail for $229, if it is more expensive, we feel that you hold off on buying it until the price has stabilised due to high demand. What retailers dare to ask these days is incredible. Based on that value, you will spend roughly $37 USD per core for this Ryzen 5 7600. Factor in the cost of ownership for the complete ecosystem, as well as DDR5 and a new AM5 motherboard, of course. Because of its price level, I am not a fan of X670(E) motherboards. I strongly advise you to pursue a B650 series motherboard, as the difference will be primarily USB/SATA related, that and WIFI6e. Unless you require dozens of USB connections and PCIe gen 5.0 GPU slots, the infrastructure provided by B650 boards remains excellent.

Gaming performance

The new architecture and high clock rates assist AMD in regaining ground on Intel's 12th Gen devices, but Intel is poised to win with 13th Gen processors. However, both had some wins and losses (in comparison to 12th Gen Alder Lake). Individual wins per brand and processor segmentation (mainstream, high-end, and enthusiast) are now exact. So, on average, this processor can feed frames as quickly as Intel's equivalent with a powerful graphics card. However, your gaming experience will be excellent at six or eight cores; we believe that eight cores are the norm these days for a genuinely great gaming PC and overall PC desktop. 

DDR5 Memory

While DDR5 memory is already becoming more affordable, you will most certainly pay a premium right now. AMD indicates that 6000 MHz is a sweet spot; however, please read our memory scaling article, as 5200 MHz gets you there 99% of the time as well. We test with two 16GB G.Skill memory modules rated 6000:CL30. With this frequency and latency, the sweet spot will never be pricing. We had no stability difficulties, but since AMD provided these kits, they have been thoroughly tested for compatibility. This is not a complaint; with the introduction of a new architecture, Intel and AMD are always racing against the clock to ensure memory kits are firmware compatible. First-time PC post delay - The first time you'll start up your system it'll trains memory. Once you set your XMP/EXPO profile, it'll do that again. This process can take 2-3 minutes. Once your memory is trained POST and, thus, boot times will ramp up as fast as you usually can expect. So don't worry about that. 

Energy efficiency and heat

The Ryzen 5 7600X is a processor rated at 105 Watts, the 7600 is a 65 Watts part. The thing is, much like Intel's PL2 states, AMD now applies a PPT of 142 W for the X model and we measure 88W PPT for the 7600 as tested, so that means your processor can utilize that wattage. All these factors produce all that heat we've been talking about. Our processor hovers in the 70~75 Degrees C domain with a mainstream LCS cooler; we're fine with that. 

Overclocking

As with all processors, you still have a bit of leech to overlock. With proper liquid cooling (an LCS kit with enough capacity), selecting all cores towards your maximum multiplier is the easiest way to overclock. With these temps at hand, we advise the voltage regulated by the motherboard (auto voltage). For Ryzen 5 7600 all-core max seems to be in the ~5400 MHz area with LCS, again, that's all cores.

Conclusion

Due to much-improved energy consumption and far lower levels I do like the 65W processor quite a bit better than the X models.  This six-core processor makes proper sense for gamers on a tighter budget. It will provide adequate performance with even more powerful and premium graphics cards. This one's thermals and energy levels are also rather good, so everything is in order. However, installing a 7600/7600X on an X670(E) motherboard would be overkill. Please opt for a B650 with lower overall platform costs. AMD performs well in terms of performance; compared to the 7600X you can see an average reduction of ~10% performance at far better energy- and heat levels, with clock frequencies reaching 5.1 GHz on some cores. IPC forced AMD to unlock all available registers in exchange for improved thermal and energy efficiency. In addition to the new AM5 platforms, PCIe Gen 5 is now available. However, it serves no function because no graphics card requires PCIe Gen 5. We were also anticipating that AMD would have seeded some Gen5-ready NVMe SSD samples, however, they have not yet been seeded or are even available. To be clear, we are not convinced that the PCIe Gen 5 SSD will make a significant difference in real-world performance and user experience; yes, sustained rates will reach +10GB/s, but you will still get the same 4K read/write performance because the most important thing going on is bandwidth. In conclusion, we are impressed by AMD's new offering; Zen 4 is a step forward in performance, but the entire cost of ownership (of the platform) for consumers remain high. It is perhaps worth noting that we had no stability concerns or other issues, which is great for a new platform. The Ryzen 5 7600 is priced at $220, making it the most affordable Zen 4 option available; combined with a B650 motherboard this is where greater value will be realised, as the X670(E) series is too pricey. Of course, AMD provides an upgrade path with Socket AM5, but AM4 has seen its last wave of processors. AMD guarantees AM5 socket compatibility till at least 2025. So, perhaps begin with this less expensive processor and then upgrade to a new generation in a year or two. If you choose it, an appropriate liquid cooler for the Ryzen 5 7600 remains recommended, however, we'd rather steer you to the non-X Ryzen 7 7700. Be sure to read that review.

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